Part 2 of our 2 Part Series “An Interview With Nick Flaminio”

Is it a complicated product to install, to set up, to train people on?

AOne of the challenges is that, the two products a NICE product and the OpenText product. There are certainly the differences between the products, but the industry is mature. Often times, perhaps 80% of the customers out there, either solution will fit. You have to understand what the specific business is and make sure that you give them the right solution. There are those that really need one product versus the other. But for the most part, 80% of the companies out there, can go with both products. Both are strong, robust solutions with rich feature set. The difference is going to be the implementation. I think that’s where the services step in. I see this a lot of times, where customers will buy the technology, but it doesn’t get implemented. When I say implemented, I’m not talking about the text on the keyboard. I’m talking about implemented into the business properly and the business case suffers as a result. I believe our focus is to ensure that the solution does get implemented, and the customer becomes aware of how to best use the application, so it soaks in properly. A business case is achieved a lot quicker than it would otherwise be.

Q

Describe a typical client, company size, company type.

AI should probably also add that, as a part of the workforce optimization solution, there’s a call recording capability. We know when your call is maybe monitored. What actually happened? The first step in that process is when the call comes into the agent, we should record that interaction. We have a lot of expertise in call recording. Our origins are in the workforce optimization or Call Center space. However in the last couple of years, we’ve also acquired the assets of a competitor, their call recording business. They were a little bit into the Call Center space, but they were more so in the Public Safety space, so police, fire, city, municipal services, and basically for the most part is call recording. We’ve got a lot of customers in that space. When you ask me describe a customer for you, we actually have two types of customers. We have one in the Call Center space. Typically you’re looking at around, I think still, probably, and just because of legacy, 200 agents and above. Perhaps a little bit higher than that as well. But certainly I think the bigger growth is in the 200 agents, the 50 agents to 200 agents, there are a lot more of those out there than there are in the 200 and above. But nonetheless, that’s our profile as a customer. They’re typically larger Enterprise customers, so one of the larger banks or insurance companies, Telecom, services, financial services is typically what we see as far as a Call Center space. On the Public Safety side it’s different. It’s typically where we see perhaps 200 seats and above, or typically in the 50 seats range and perhaps even below. Those are typically government, utilities, police, fire, ambulance, even municipalities.

Q

Can you get analytics through call recording

AYou can. Analytics is an emerging technology, so it still has time for customer adaption, or adoption. As far as the Analytics goes, I think the adoption on the Call Center side is a lot further ahead than on the Public Safety side. But right now, it’s just audio recording. There’s some that do screens recording as well, but I would say, the large majority are audio recording.

Q

What customer type are you doing the bulk of your business with?

AJust because the customer space is typically in larger Enterprise. I would say the Public Safety right now is, has more customers there. I think that, if you were to look at the revenue side, the Enterprise side there’s probably more revenue going there. But there’s a lot more effort involved as well. The longer sales cycle. There’s a greater effort in terms of involvement and the implementation, whether it be technical or consulting type services involved, whereas call recording is more technical. It’s easier to deploy, and often times we do it remotely, so certainly a lot more on a customers out there, but not as much effort as there would be in the Enterprise side, the Call Center side.

We look at how many calls are coming in, we forecast what resources you’re going to need in order to get the right resources, in order to handle those calls, so that the calls are picked up quickly, and they’re handled properly.

Q

We talked about the Qfiniti suite of products, we talked about TotalView, Workforce, Avaya…

AIt’s now called NICE WFM. NICE has a suite as well. Qfiniti has a suite, so Qfiniti is like Office, you have Observe which is were… that kind of thing. NICE has a suite called Engage, but I don’t know how they wrapped that around the different specific products. We just called them NICE WFM, and engages the recording part of it and there’s analytics as well.

Q

But it is not quite the same as the Qfiniti suite?

ANo, it’s the same. It’s as complete. Arguably there are a lot of things that are not in the NICE solution set that are not in the Qfiniti, a solution set. There are some features that,… some things that Qfiniti doesn’t go into. Does that make sense to you? What I mean by that is that, the branding is not as tight on the NICE side as it is with Qfiniti.

Q

They both develop systems, but one’s more mature in their marketing?

AYes. If I say Qfiniti, that’s a broader side. That’s like saying Office, whereas I don’t think NICE has branding in the Office wrong. It’s sort of word, excel.

Q

It’s consistent. Is it easier for the client to understand?

A

I think it is. Technologies from both are great.

We’re looking at different technologies so we want to… I believe that the word WFO, Workforce optimization is mature. Most of the customers out there have something. We’re basically fighting over the same stuff. Different than what it was 10 years ago. We’re going to follow what the market is looking for. What is the market looking for? There’s been a lot of discussion about Cloud.

We’ve talked to customers and they said ”Can you put this out in the Cloud?” Reason being we don’t want the IT people, or I don’t want to get IT people involved because, we’ve done projects where we’ve done an upgrade and our services are in the $50 000 range. But the internal costs are $500 000. A lot of these large organizations,… our cost is minimal compared to what they have to charge internally.

Q

In order to absorb the service?

ARight. The business is looking at $50,000 and their own IT, I’d file a $100,000. Sometimes companies are looking at sense angle. This doesn’t make sense. What if I avoid the IT altogether and I don’t put any servers on my site. I don’t have the managing or servers, or I don’t have them interfacing to this technology or that technology. Put it all in the Cloud. Companies have approached this in the past, last two to three years, and have asked us ”Can you do this in the Cloud or host it somewhere else on your premises?” There’s different versions of clouds. You can host it on your site, we can host it on our site, we can host it in the Cloud, we can do a SAS model, we can do a managed service model, which is what I like. There’s different options available. However the costs are higher. From our perspective, it’s higher. Because now we’re taking on the burden of managing your technology. However internally the cost… so that the end result, the host and cost both internal, and our is lower. That’s where the business case is for Cloud. Theoretically. It’s hard to figure that out, because I don’t know if you eliminate their IT. Do you get rid of them, or is that still a cost?